LOS GATOS, California -- Hifn, Inc. (Nasdaq: HIFN) announced today that it had closed a definitive agreement with IBM to acquire selected assets and license other intellectual property from IBM associated with the IBM Picoprocessor PowerNP product line for approximately $15 million in cash.

IBM will manufacture the Picoprocessor PowerNP products for Hifn as part of its foundry business.

"The Picoprocessor PowerNP products, recognized as the most flexible and powerful solutions in the industry, are an ideal strategic complement to Hifn's security processor business. Hifn anticipates that the acquisition will increase its revenues significantly for FY2004 and beyond, and is accretive," said Chris Kenber, Hifn's Chairman, and CEO. "The transaction with IBM also provides us with licenses to use IBM's network processor technology in our next generation of security services processors, thus giving us an industry leading platform for our next phase of growth." IBM's Picoprocessor PowerNP family of network processors is designed into many network developer platforms that are already in volume production. Key customers include Cisco and Huawei.Hifn Inc.